The mission was simple – take just fifteen minutes of your time and help someone with something time-consuming for them. Angela spent an entire day, even recruiting her mom, to help her friend Chris.

Chris’ husband, Mark, is the head of a HAZMAT team. The regulator valve on his suit malfunctioned, giving Mark severe acid burns in his lungs. Chris (ironically, a home healthcare nurse) took a leave of absence from her job to spend all of her time juggling being by Mark’s side and taking care of their children. To help her exhausted friend, Angela insisted Chris take the entire day off to relax, get her hair done, and have some shopping therapy. While Chris was at the mall, Angela asked her mom to spend the day in the hospital and keep Mark company. Angela spent the day watching Chris’ kids, cleaning Chris’ entire house, and even cooking several meals in advance to freeze so Chris wouldn’t have to cook for the next week. Chris came home at the end of the day to a happy husband, sleeping kids, a clean home, and a freezer full of home-made meals.

Happily, weeks later, Mark is home now. His O2 levels have to be constantly monitored and he has a breathing apparatus, but he’s doing great. Mark is even (jokingly) threatening to leave Chris for Angela since she’s such a good substitute cook!

Angela absolutely went above and beyond the mission requirements, and she’s the inspiration for the new highlight. Every month, we’ll pick the person who did the most selfless mission (which will be extremely hard to judge, so please don’t get upset if you weren’t chosen!) and write a short feature on them. If you want to be considered, don’t forget to go to the forum and post what you did for each mission under the Mission and Results topic!

I am a horrible story teller and it’s a major problem in how it impacts ItStartsWith.Us.

The main reason I joined ISWU was because I could relate to many of your stories shared in the community:

the pain and frustrations happening in life

the moments of joy from doing the missions

the satisfaction after the missions from helping someone out and wanting to do more

I could relate to all of those and it made me want to be a better person and take more action to help others.

I Need to Get Real with You

When I had a chance to help lead ISWU last summer, I wanted people to continue sharing those stories while I shared the story of ISWU with more people.

But like I said, I am a horrible story teller. Because I wasn’t telling the story of the community, the community started becoming quieter and less active week by week.

I personally consider that my fault and take responsibility.

Over the past 2 months or so, I really thought deeply about ISWU and what a special community it is and can be.

Instead of resolving to become a better story teller, I want to try something new:

Your participation and stories is what makes the community so awesome.

Your stories are what helps motivate and change the lives of others.

The Shift

I want to take our community and make it a platform for sharing how kindness has changed your life, and then make your stories into missions that changes lives.

We’re still going to be doing the same thing every week, but I don’t wantР В Р’В Р вЂ™Р’В Р В Р вЂ Р В РІР‚С™Р Р†РІР‚С›РЎС›Р В Р’В Р Р†Р вЂљРІвЂћСћР В РІР‚в„ўР вЂ™Р’В this to be me anymore behind the scenes solely creating the missions. Instead, I want to extend a hand in helping to share the best and most meaningful stories with others.

It’s time we start getting back as a community and sharing with each other.

So if you’d like to take this new leap with me and share some meaningful moments from your life, e-mail me at jos (at) itstartswith (dot) us and let’s work together to on making it a mission to help change lives.

-Josh

(PS you can also drop a line on Twitter @itstartswithus and I’ll follow up with you)

Every once in a while, while going about the business of ItStartsWith.Us, I am fortunate enough to witness a singular ray of light that breaks through the clouds and illuminates who we are and why we are here. Yesterday was one of those days. I was going through the ISWU community forum, where people can share the results of the missions I’ve assigned. The last mission was “Use the Technology” (in a partnership with the awesome Sparked.com), where we were directed to use technology in a way to make a difference for someone in our lives. Check out what one of our members had to say:

At first, when I saw this mission, I thought to myself something along the lines of “Agh. How am I going to do that?!” Then I got a text message- It was one of my friends thanking me again for a cupcake I gave him right before his last Advanced Placement test, and telling me to have a good weekend. It was above what he had to do, and it was sweet- definitely made me feel good.

Anyway, I was still struggling to apply this mission, and yesterday I was speaking with an underclassman who I “adopted” as my younger sister. We’re both in the marching band, and we both play instruments in male-dominated sections. Because she was unable to have a section “Older sister”, and I had no section “Little sister”, I just kind of adopted her and we’d ride the band bus together. Anyway, yesterday she gave me her tumblr link (I didn’t give her mine, because it’s about a lot of personal stuff with depression, self injury and suicide, that some of my best friends don’t know about) and I saw a post she had written a long time ago about struggling with herself because she had/has a friend who struggles with depression, self injury, suicidal thoughts/attempts.

I messaged her and told her that we didn’t have to talk about it at all, and that I respected her privacy, but if she ever needed to talk to me about any of that kind of stuff, I was always there for her. We ended up talking for a while, with plans to hang out in the future so I could kind of give her a better idea of where I was coming from with that whole situation.

I really hoped it helped/helps her and at least makes her feel a little supported.

And, well, can you tell? I’m seeing a theme here: These missions are helping me, too. [Thank you, Nate!!!]
After speaking with her, I went to my room and threw out my razors. I put a small index card with her name written on it in the altoids case I used to keep them in, and put the altoids case back in it’s usual spot. I will do this for her, maybe even myself.

I was happily stopped in my tracks after reading this yesterday. Seeing the amazing things that can happen as the result of a small suggestion and just a few minutes of effort is one of the true joys of being a part of the ItStartsWith.Us team. If you’d like to join us, you can sign up at the top of the page on the left.

I used to write a blog. Then, as I began to build and grow allmyprojects, I realized that I didnР В Р’В Р вЂ™Р’В Р В Р’В Р Р†Р вЂљР’В Р В Р’В Р вЂ™Р’В Р В Р вЂ Р В РІР‚С™Р РЋРІвЂћСћР В Р’В Р В РІР‚В Р В Р вЂ Р В РІР‚С™Р РЋРІР‚С”Р В Р Р‹Р РЋРІР‚С”t have the time to write on a consistent basis. So I outsourced writing duties on the ItStartsWith.Us blog to other people. And now here I find myself, three months later, realizing that I am no longer a blogger.

For just over two years now (105 weeks, to be exact) I have been the leader of the ItStartsWith.Us team. My goal was to assign one mission per week that would give all of us the chance to make a positive impact in the lives of those around us – to enable us all to change the world.

And change the world we have, friends. Two years later, the team has grown from 18 people to around 5,000 people, in close to 100 countries. We’ve impacted hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions. We’ve changed thousands of lives. We’ve even saved a few.

And we will continue to do so, but not with me at the helm. I have personally attempted (and almost always completed) each and every weekly mission I have assigned for the past 105 weeks . . . except the last one. I realized today that I had completely forgotten about it. And while that’s not a terrible offense, it does show that my attention to this project has slipped greatly, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the sporadic mission assignments and blog postings so far this year.

I am no longer giving this project the attention it deserves, and so it is time for me to move on. ItStartsWith.Us needs an engaged, enthusiastic leader at the helm – someone who is eager to jump in every day, interact with members, construct activities that change lives, and build this project into something greater than it is today.

I’d like to give one of you that opportunity.

I still plan to own ItStartsWith.Us, but I am now officially looking for someone to take over leadership of the project. I want someone who loves the idea of guiding thousands of people to make a difference all over the world. Someone who is savvy enough both on the social/web end and the business end to build the technology and make the connections necessary to take ISWU to the next level. I’ll still be around, and I’ll function as a mentor to whomever decides to accept this challenge. If you like sports analogies, you could say that I’m the team owner, and you’re the coach/GM.

So if you’re interested in this opportunity, just send me an email (nate [at] itstartswith.us) and tell me why you want the job, and why you’d be good at it. I’ll start talking to candidates within the next week.

If you have any reaction or comments to this announcement, feel free to respond in the comment section below.

In an odd twist of fate, I decided to clean out my backpack before I sent this message out, and I happened to find the original planning docs for ISWU, and a copy of the very first email I sent out to the 18 founding members. I didn’t even know I still had that stuff. You’ll see a picture of it at the top of this post.

I’d like to thank each and every one of you so much for being a part of this truly amazing team. I know that our goal is to change others’ lives, but I want you to know that you all have changed mine. I would not be the person I am today if not for the love and grace I’ve been shown by so many members of this team, and for that I am eternally grateful.

It’s been an honor to serve as your leader for the first two years of the project, and I hope we’ll continue to serve alongside each other under the new leadership.

Last year, we set out on a mission to surprise an entire town with handwritten letters with our Mysterious Letters project. Our leadership team pulled together, brainstormed, used the Internet to find as many addresses as we could and hoped our project would be a success.

The town we picked was Omer, Michigan. With the help of a few amazing It Starts With Us members (you know who you are), we were able to send handwritten letters and postcards to almost everyone in Omer. We also received e-mail messages from members around the world, which we wrote on stationary and sent to the town in Michigan.

However, the amount of handwritten letters we received from members outside of the leadership team was disappointing Р В Р’В Р вЂ™Р’В Р В Р’В Р Р†Р вЂљР’В Р В Р’В Р вЂ™Р’В Р В Р вЂ Р В РІР‚С™Р РЋРІвЂћСћР В Р’В Р В РІР‚В Р В Р’В Р Р†Р вЂљРЎв„ўР В Р Р‹Р РЋРЎв„ў two letters (so, thank you to the two of you who took time to do this).